We woke up this morning and pretty much reached an immediate family consensus on a change of plans. We decided to forego the National Air and Space Museum, and any other Smithsonian (which is kind of a shame, especially as they’re free, and if we had more time I’d love to do them) and hit the road immediately.

It turned out to be the right choice, I’d say, because if we hadn’t, we’d have shlepped into town here around 9 p.m. , but as it is we got in with plenty of daylight left, found our new Airbnb home with no hassle, and had a couple of hours to explore the hidden gem that is Washington, North Carolina. I say ‘hidden gem’ largely because I was previously unaware of its existence, but it is a very nice place.

They call it ‘the original Washington’ because they adopted the name in 1776 (It was previously something like ‘Forks of the Tar’ or something ugly like that) and it did, indeed play a role in the American revolution as larger ports, like Charleston, were blockaded by the British. So, it was sort of a smuggler’s cove. Outside of that, though, the local tendency to refer to it as a ‘historic town’ seems to be because it’s been here a long time.

We took a walk along the boardwalk, which has reeds next to the shore, then a field of water lilies, then more turtles than I’ve ever seen in my life, and when you lean over the rail to get a better look at the turtles, you see there are quite a few fish in there as well. On the outer side, there is the marina, where a lot of fancy yachts are docked on the Pamlico river, which actually seems to be kind of a bay, and leads right out to the Atlantic.

Walked into town with the intent of doing grocery shopping and coming home and making dinner, but there was no grocery store. Found a nice restaurant, though, and everybody was happy with their meal.